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Kennen vs Vlad laning

I play Kennen frequently and I have problems dealing with a decent Vlad player.

I read that you should harass him before lvl 5 since his Q is on a long CD. But a good Vlad keeps minions between you and him to avoid your harass. Also, good Vlads don't waste their pool, so ganking him is very difficult.

I also read that one strategy is to push harder than he does in an attempt to deny gold farm, since the tower will be stealing last hits. Has anyone tried this strategy with Kennen? I worry that pushing hard w/ Kennen means burning E, which both brings me closer to Vlad's harass and leaves me vulnerable to counter attack, since E is Kennen's major escape ability.

I've been leveling Q first and maybe this is the problem? Has anyone tried leveling W first in an attempt to harass him w/ the 5th auto attack for mark and then following up with W? At least with that harass, it won't matter if he's behind minions.

Any advice from Kennen players (or Vlad players) would be much appreciated. Thanks.

I wouldn't know what to suggest but my main is Vlad and I HAVE been shut down by very good Kennen players in mid, but they're few and far between from my personal experience. A lot of it has to do with if you can stun Vlad successfully, because if you stun him he can't heal or pool. But I guess a lot of it is if you are good at landing skill shots regardless of minions or not. I would suggest dive bombing him also, *I'm also not a Kennen player take this with a grain of salt* but Vlad's strength lies in hit and run/kiting attacks, extended fights where you get in his face don't always end well and especially not early game.

Thanks for the advice, I should try dive bombing him once early game. I tried it once when he was around lvl 4 or 5 and surprisingly I pushed him back to recall. The problem was he hit me pretty hard too and I didn't have enough to push the tower.

The stun idea is a good one. If I auto-attack minions I can build up my mark hits faster and thus be able to land 2 marks with just the 5th charged attack. Then the W will stun. Of course, going in for a hit w/ an auto-attack also puts me in range for a Q harass from Vlad, so I'm uncertain if the tradeoff will be worth it.

Sometimes trial and error are the only ways to get ahead in this game, but if you can stun him and pop your ult I'm pretty sure that is what has shut me down, but if you can't close the gap and he gets a chance to pop a few hits off on you, he can probably waste you in 3-5 hits or one successful combo, so be careful either way but see what works for you.

At levels 1-4, let him push the creeps. It's worth missing 1-2 lasthits to get that very first wave to push. Then zone the **** outta him. It's not uncommon that I can outlevel him by as much as 2 levels if I'm a strong laning champion. As Xin, I can easily kill him twice before level 6 if his jungler doesn't come around a lot.

Good Vlads won't do this, however, and will just stand there to be sure the lane never pushes (as in not even lasthit, if necessary).

Since his Q is on a long cooldown at the early ranks, zoning him is an excellent idea. Allow the first wave or two to push towards your tower (avoiding a last hit or two if needed). Once the lane is somewhat pushed, you can hop behind his minions to fire off shuriken and auto-attacks without having to worry too much about retaliatory fire from the minions (if the target champion is too far from the minions, they won't get the call for help).

Edit: In case there's confusion, 'letting the wave push' means letting the minions get closer to 'your' tower, not his.

If you can get a good E->Q->W Active->W Passive->Q combo off, he'll be in huge trouble, regardless of whether or not he Q'd you on the way in. Keep poking him with the auto-attacks until he gets back to the safety of his tower - taking a tower hit is counter-productive.

If he pools after you touch him with E, he probably did a ton of damage to himself anyway *and* his pool's on CD for a while - tag him with Q->W when he pops back up.

Remember that even though you arn't building AD/ArPen, auto-attacks do considerable damage at low levels. Ignoring runes/masteres, a level 1 Vlad has ~15 armor, while level 1Kennen does ~54 damage per auto attack - 49 damage after armor, about 3/4 of a rank 1 Shuriken's base damage.